To provide an image forming method for proofing a printed matter by which an image excellent and uniform in tone in a white solid part (non-image part), high in proximity to a printed matter and less in black mesh tone variation can be obtained.

The image forming method for proofing the printed matter is carried out by imagewisely exposing a silver halide color photosensitive material having a silver halide emulsion layer which can develop colors of at least cyan, magenta, and yellow on a support, to light based on the same image data as the printed matter, wherein a non-image part in the image data is exposed to light at two or more kinds of different exposure light intensities, and at least one kind of pixel size in the non-image part is 3 to 50 μm.